070106 FS Research Module Global Studies (2014S)

This research seminar will investigate production, trade and consumption of textiles with a focus on the connections that inter-link various locations. As a universal need, cloth production exists at any place; and the textile sector has given rise to inter-regional division of labour from Neolithic times onwards. Silk roads were the first global connections. As textiles are a main object of expressing status and identity, they do not only reflect the transfer of goods and technologies, but of aesthetical patterns as well.

Locations matters, because industry creates jobs, income and growth: therefore location and relocation has always been a disputed issue – with employers, workers, governments negotiating the relationship between local development and free trade. In the course of history, the leading world centers of textile export production had shifted from Asia, where they were located until c. 1800, to Western Europe, which outcompeted other producers with the help of the Industrial Revolution, establishing the factory system as a global model for catching up. In the 20th century global textile production left the old cores and was moved into Newly Industrializing Countries.
Textiles.

Threads stands for the product: textiles, and it stands for the networks and connections, which inter-link different locations and world regions. Threads serve as a framework for the research topics, which will be developed by the participants, concentrating on the following aspects:
Merchant and trade networks
Production networks and commodity chains (putting out, multi-national companies, global buyers)
Migrations chains
Life course and inter-generational chains (of trade, business and workers)
Solidarity chains (how workers and consumers cooperate and organize in collective actions)
Knowledge chains (diffusion, transfer, spying of experts and know-how)